American psychologist Claude Steel, through his classical study in 1997, demonstrated how we self discriminate against ourselves. He called it a stereotype threat. The idea is pretty simple actually.
In the study, a test of mathematical reasoning was given to two different batches of students comprising white and black students. Before they could begin, one batch of students were told that the test was supposed to indicate the student’s mental ability. The other batch was told that the test was a standard laboratory test. The test results for the batch who was told that the test was supposed to be indicative of mental ability showed a clear drop in performance in the black students. The other batches where the students, to whom no such comment was made, the black students faired comparably with the white students.
In another study, white and black athletes from Princeton were taken to a golf course and divided into several groups. They were supposed to do some basic golf exercises and work on their techniques. To one of the groups, the researchers gave a form that had a question about their race. Simply having the race question, primed them to think about their race and the idea that golf is a white man’s sport. The performance of the black athletes in that group fell appreciably when compared with that of the white athletes. Merely, bringing up race made them think about related statistical observations (golf being a white man’s sport) had a demotivating effect on the performance of the black athletes.
Another group was told the idea of the exercises was to measure natural athletic ability and yet another group was told the objective was to observe strategic sports thinking. In the first group, black athletes performed better and in the next one, the white athletes performed better. Both the white and black athletes had themselves bought into the societal biases themselves.
Many similar studies have been conducted to observe the effects of highlighting and bringing race or any other bias into the forefront, before someone gets started with any job at hand. This is what researchers call self discrimination. The idea that makes you consider yourself to be inferior at something because a large section of society also considers you to be inferior at it. Self discrimination is more dangerous because it is self reinforcing.
In another study (final one for this post, I promise), a group of factory line managers in Bangladesh, comprising both men and women, were observed over a period of time to see if the inherent biases people had against women line managers in industrial environments had any merit. Women and men faired comparably in all the trainings related to the job. It was however, observed that the performance of the men who were being managed by women line managers, was relatively poorer compared to those managed by men. This led to the performance of the teams led by women managers to be inferior to that of that of those led by men, thereby further establishing their inferior status, due to no fault of their own.
This self-fulfilling nature of discrimination is almost always faced by the disadvantaged group and is rooted deeply in social context.
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